How can I speed up rendering an animation with Cycles?
I'd recommend you use the GPU. Blender probably shuts down because you didn't set it to use the GPU at the preferences tab. Go to Edit &gt; Preferences &gt; System &gt; Set it to the GPU you use, NVIDIA is CUDA, AMD is OpenGl. Other things you can do is optimize the amount of bounces in Render Properties &gt; Light Paths &gt; Max Bounces.